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If thou buy an Hebrew servant, six years he shall serve: and in the seventh he shall go out free for nothing.
If he came in by himself, he shall go out by himself: if he were married, then his wife shall go out with him.
If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself.
And if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:
Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever.

New Defender's Study Bible Notes

21:6 bore his ear. This ordinance is very significant, being the first given after the ten commandments. This first ordinance and those that follow center first on the most humble members of society (the slaves–recognizing the then-universal existence of slavery, and ameliorating the practice), then on other people, then on property–thus establishing God’s priorities. Second, right at the beginning of the dispensation of Law, we are given a typological picture of God’s Servant, who would someday come to bear the curse of the Law for us, saving us by His grace. The slave, with full right to be set free in his seventh year, chooses rather to stay in the will of his master, listening to his voice only–symbolized and sealed by the opening in his ear. Just so, Christ said prophetically: “Mine ears hast thou opened:...Lo, I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy will, O my God: yea, thy law is within my heart” (Psalm 40:6-8). The fulfillment of this prophecy is described in Hebrews 10:5-10. There, the opening of the ears of the servant is included in the preparation of the Lord’s human body “to do thy will, O God... By the which will we are sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (Hebrews 10:7,10).


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